


in and out of darkness and light

by loveandthetruth



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Dark Past, Destroy Ending, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Suicide, N7 Day, Post-Canon, Redemption, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8495167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/pseuds/loveandthetruth
Summary: There was something familiar about the shape of the features under the shadow of the hood, the height and build of the body she had spent two years reconstructing and another year working beside. The movements were different, a little stilted. Shepard had told Miranda that the clone fell from the Normandy. It had clearly taken a toll.





	

Lowell City was a long way from the Alliance headquarters on Mars and generally an uninteresting place these days, old and somewhat underfunded as humanity continued to expand into space. As the European Space Agency moved out, the criminal underground had moved in. It had been flagged as a potential Cerberus hideout, but Miranda didn’t buy it; Cerberus hadn’t been in Lowell City in almost a decade. Still, a little due diligence never hurt anyone.

It was getting dark and the city was beginning to come to life. People oozed out of dusty prefab buildings to look for black market deals and wild nights. Miranda blended in carefully, moving with the crowd and occasionally stopping to haggle over whatever meagre goods were on show. She didn’t want to look like she was here to find someone in particular, there was no need to let people try and guess at her business.

A glimpse in the glass behind the storefront told her that she was still being followed. It was the third time she had seen that beat up brown jacket, hood pulled low. She made one last offer for the ship part and arranged for it to be delivered to a warehouse, an Alliance fronted dead drop, where she was sure they could make use of it. The Alliance was looking to make use of many things these days, including any former Cerberus people they could find. Their usefulness in the Reaper War and the Crucible Project had not gone unnoticed.

Miranda walked ahead, keeping a casual pace. There was a crowd building in the alley up ahead, the wild shouting carrying all the way down the street. It would be the perfect place to lose her pursuer. She slipped between bodies easily while their attention was drawn to the street brawl in the centre of the crowd until she spotted a door slightly ajar. She ducked into the building and cast a quick glance around the inside, and closed the door carefully behind her once she was certain it was empty. She crouched under the frame of the window until he passed her.

He waited, taking a few uncertain steps forward and looking around over the heads of the crowd. He had realised she’d given him the slip. This close Miranda could see his jaw working as he gritted his teeth, his fists balled into his pockets. There was something familiar about the shape of the features under the shadow of the hood, the height and build of the body she had spent two years reconstructing and another year working beside. The movements were different, a little stilted. Shepard had told Miranda that the clone fell from the Normandy. It had clearly taken a toll.

Miranda waited a for a few more minutes until she was sure that, in his frustration, he had given up on her. As she eased herself back out of the door and into the crowd behind him, careful to keep her distance, a few things turned over in her mind. He moved through the crowd with such careful anonymity that Miranda didn’t believe there was any way someone could have known that he had anything to do with Cerberus so she suspected that he himself had put out the tip that had led her here and he had been following her since she had arrived. If he had wanted to attack her he could’ve done it more than once as she had inconspicuously provided openings for him, pretending to be unguarded. He clearly had another agenda.

Arriving at what was, for all appearances, a derelict apartment building, he climbed up to the second floor and through a broken window. She watched him pace across the room for a few minutes before he disappeared from view. It was only then that she followed his path up the side of the building. A peek over the frame told her the room was empty. There was the sound of running water behind the west wall. She eased herself soundlessly into the room and drew her pistol.

He stepped out of the bathroom and froze. He scowled and grit his teeth but he didn’t move while she scrutinised him through the dim light. The resemblance to Shepard was more than passing though his nose was well and truly broken and there was a shallow scar across his cheek, bruises across his jaw. The scar across his scalp, partially obscured by bleached, grown out hair looked deep and fairly recent, the skin still pink and raw and staples not yet removed. Even without those changes to his appearance he still couldn’t have passed for Shepard to anyone who had known him at all. There was something indefinably different about him, something sharper, darker, more wild.

“What do you want?”

The clone stayed silent, watching her, watching the gun.

She rolled her eyes and lowered the pistol but didn’t holster it. “You got me out here. You’ve been following me. Let’s just get this over with. What do you want?”

He shifted his feet and put his hands in his pockets. “I have information. Might be useful to you.”

“And you want what in exchange?

“You’re chasing Cerberus. I want in.”

“Why?”

“You know why.” He had been carefully nonchalant up until now but those last words had bite behind them. He gritted his teeth again, inhaled sharply. “I can’t do it on my own. You know how things are now. I need clearance to leave the system and I’m never going to get it.”

She considered him for a long minute and he stayed still under her scrutiny. Still, there were tells to his nervousness, or frustration perhaps. His hands stayed shoved deep into his pockets, the tightness of his fists visible through the fabric, and his jaw stayed tight. His eyes stayed on her gun hand. She holstered it and he glanced up at her, finally looking at her directly.

“What do I call you?”

He seemed to relax for the first time that night, but it was the feigned assurance of a bully who’d found an easy target. “What’s wrong with John Shepard?” He smiled a sharp, false smile.

Miranda ignored his posturing at being the apparent survivor. “I’m not calling you that.”

He shrugged, already giving up on the game. Miranda felt that it was more to do with lingering resentment than just the fact that she wasn’t playing along. “Call me whatever you like.”

There was a fleeting urge to call him something demeaning but, ever professional, she shoved it down and settled for something simple instead. “Adam.”

The line of his mouth thinned and he shifted his feet again. Unlike him, Miranda didn’t have to struggle to keep her reactions under control, well used to projecting whatever image she wanted people to see. Internally she smirked at his short-sightedness. He had foolishly given her the power to name him, and to rub salt in the wound, he felt like it fit him. He liked it.

Smug though she was, she didn’t feel the need to let him stew in his mistake. “Ready to go?”

“Ready.” He crouched to pull a bag from under a sofa as decrepit as the rest of the building before heading to the window and waiting for her to go ahead of him.

Miranda let the urge to hesitate slide off her as she moved fluidly out of the window and down the side of the building. She could take him easily if he tried anything, but it wasn’t likely. She was sceptical that he had any information of note but whatever his true intentions, he seemed perfectly content to fall in line and bide his time. He was being cagey about something and the best way for Miranda to figure him out was to keep him where she could see him. If he ever decided to stab her in the back she would see him coming. She had made a mistake with Niket, perhaps not in trusting him in giving him the latitude to betray her and not notice.

Adam followed her calmly, almost at ease if not for the fine tension in his body while he held ready for something to go wrong. Miranda wondered if he was regretting the latitude he had given to Rasa to control him but she didn’t intend to make Rasa’s mistakes either. There may have been something off about him, but he had shown plenty of potential tonight and if she was careful with him, he could yet find it in himself to be a valuable asset to the Alliance.

 ***

The docking area at headquarters seemed especially bright and clean after the grime of Lowell City. Adam had been quiet for the whole short trip, but when he looked out at the security checkpoint. Miranda could feel the tension in him ratchet up, his knuckles going white as his grip on his bag tightened.

“Here.” Miranda dug around in a storage compartment and pulled out a recon hood. It was an older model and less conspicuous looking but it would still be out of place with his street clothes. That didn’t matter as long as it would conceal his even more conspicuous face. “Put this on and follow my lead.”

He did as he was told. Miranda couldn’t help but wonder what he had been like with Rasa. If Adam’s plot on the Citadel had failed, she was almost certain that Rasa was to blame. Her plans were always overambitious and her performance had always tanked if she had to work closely with people.

One of the guards at the checkpoint moved out from behind the desk to greet her. “Ms Lawson.”

“James.” She gave him a familiar smile, softened herself a little before he introduced Adam. “This is my guest. You can search his bag and his person but the hood has to stay. He’s a confidential informant and his identity needs to be protected.”

There was little the guards could do besides glance at each other and acquiesce. Miranda had clearance to bring people in, but she had also been a little lucky to be on this side of the shift change. James had seen her through this checkpoint more times that she cared to count since she had stationed herself here after Horizon but she had never had a reason to bring anyone through without fully identifying them. Their familiarity with her gave Miranda a chance to play a little loose with procedure.

They scanned him thoroughly and gave him a cursory pat down to be extra certain. Adam bore it with good grace, allowing himself to be manoeuvred and giving up his bag without hesitation. He was clean, as Miranda had suspected, but confirmation was always appreciated. Searching him herself would have made him resentful, and there was nothing to be gained from putting that pressure on the tentative alliance they had made. 

James flipped the display so Miranda could access it herself to fill in the details of her mystery guest. “Requisitions left a message. Your transport has been assigned.”

“Thanks.” She was sad to see her fighter go, but the only way she would be able to take it out of system was if it came with a carrier. “We’ll probably see you on the way out.”

“Probably not.” Miranda paused over the display where she was signing herself back in and looked up. Close to, she realised he did look drawn and tired. “My shift’s up in an hour. Last one.”

“Going home?” She wished she hadn’t asked, but she was interested despite herself.

“Yeah. I should be with dad. We lost three of us in the war, that’s the trouble with military families, right?” He forced a rueful smile, probably just as embarrassed at bringing it up, as she was for having asked for details.

Miranda thought of her father screaming as she threw him through the window. “Right.” She extended a hand, aware of Adam hanging back and watching her carefully, and James shook it warmly. “Good luck. Maybe I’ll see you around when I’m back.”

Miranda left the checkpoint behind without a backwards glance and hurried on through the compound. The place was not so full as it had been earlier that day but still crowded with military and civilian alike.

“Sign for requisitions said that way,” Adam said, indicating the left turn they just passed.

“Something more important first,” she replied, sliding into a more crowded corridor.  

She led the way to the communications centre and flashed her badge to be waved in front of the civilian queue amid much grumbling. To the officer at the desk, she said, “I need a secure channel. Priority call to Admiral Hackett.”

The comms officer didn’t bat an eyelid, but beside her Adam stiffened. “What?”

“If you want to come with me, you need a pass to leave. If you want a pass, someone has to know who you are.”

“Booth three,” the officer said, waving her to the left and utterly uninterested in Adam’s sharp glare, already looking behind them to the next person in line.

In was dark inside the booth except for the blue glow of the holo system already activated and waiting for them. Hackett stood, or at least appeared to stand, before them with his arms folded across his chest.  “Lawson. This had better be good.”

“Adam, step forward please and remove the hood.”

This time he did hesitate. He removed the recon hood with visible reluctance, glaring at Miranda as he passed her to step forward to the projector.

“Well.” There was a brief pause while Hackett processed this new development. “So you survived.”

Adam said nothing, only glanced sidelong at Miranda, leaving it to her to fill the silence. “He came forward at Lowell. He wants to help and for that he needs identity documents and clearance to leave the system.”

Hackett sighed heavily and scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked wearily at Miranda. “You vouch for this man?”

“I do.”

He sighed again. “Fine. The kit will be ready in ten minutes. I’ll have my office sign off on any clearance requests but you’ll be on file as his handler. He will be your direct responsibility.”

“Understood.”

“Dismissed.” He disappeared from the receiver panel and the lights brightened a little.

“That’s it?” Adam asked, looking sceptical.

“Don’t get too excited. I can blacklist your identity at any time. Put your hood back on, we need to get to RO.”

The requisition office was no less busy than anywhere else on headquarters, although it was restricted almost exclusively to military personnel. They waited while Miranda signed off on document after document and Adam installed his new omnitool, coded to his new identity, or lack thereof. When Miranda tested it, the only information it gave was the name Adam Smith, his hand print, the identity and contact of his handler, and a forwarding request to the office of Admiral Hackett. Miranda knew that any information requested would be responded to only as _classified_.

After receiving it, Adam went back to being as relaxed as he ever got. He didn’t get in the way, ask unnecessary questions, or generally speak unless spoken to. They returned to the docks, received her new transport, an FTL capable shuttle, and headed to the Mars spaceport.

Miranda ushered them through yet more security and signed more forms while Adam looked out at the crowds below them. There was a mindnumbing number of people sitting on the floor, standing in queues, being moved from one line to the next. Miranda joined him at the window.

“There’s a military transport in orbit,” she told him. “It’s been temporarily repurposed for civilian travel. All these people trying to get back home.” Miranda sighed and shook her head. “Come on. It’ll take us to Jump Zero.”

“Two weeks travel? And then what?”

“Well, lucky for us, I’ve just received some good news. The Sol relay is online and it’s just linked itself to the Athena Nebula.”

 ***

The ship was at total capacity but Miranda had been able to swing them a private room, a cramped space for two but it at least allowed Miranda to work in quiet, away from the collective misery of people that she couldn’t do anything for, and for Adam to not spend two weeks or more in that recon hood. Miranda spent most of her time on the way to Jump Zero going through data dumps from various contacts and news reports. In truth, she had already seen most of it but there wasn’t anything else to do. The routine was mind numbing. For his part, Adam kept out of the way. He pored over the news or read or slept for most of the day.

They were almost a week into the trip when Adam finally asked, “Aren’t you concerned that intel is out of date?”

“I would be if it was relying on it to tell me where to go or what to do. It’s not. I need it to help build movement patterns. Where people ended up after the crash, where they’re trying to go. Areas with an upswing in crime or smuggling.” Adam seemed satisfied enough by the answer, going back to blinking sleepily at the ceiling. “You still haven’t told me this useful intel of yours.”

“Brian Morgan. He’s on Illium.” He paused. “Rasa had been in contact with him.”

Miranda didn’t say that he was already on her list of people to check in with. “Do you intend to help me take down Cerberus for good or are you just waiting for the chance to take it over for yourself?”

“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Miranda rolled her eyes as Adam smirked faintly. He drifted back to sleep and Miranda dropped the datapad on the mattress, giving up. She ran her hands through her hair, exhausted and wound up with the waiting, trying to remember the last time she had so little real work. Whatever her feelings about Cerberus now, she couldn’t deny that it had kept her busy. She would have to find something real for them to do, and soon.

 ***

“I found this stuff. It’s mine.” The batarian squirmed under Adam’s boot.

“It’s not yours. You killed the guards and took it from the warehouse.” Miranda inspected the items and confirmed that they were the ones that had been stolen, flagging the location for the authorities to pick up.

“Well then, I guess I earned it.” Adam lifted his foot and drove it down into the thief’s chest.

Miranda glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. He was wearing an opaque half face visor, having complained that the recon hood was suffocating. Miranda hadn’t argued. It was easier to see little tics under the visor, the crease of his brow, the line of his mouth. He was grinning now.

It had been Miranda’s idea to put their time waiting for the completion of relay repairs to good use. Adam, not wanting much to help with the reconstruction efforts where Miranda’s biotics would be of most use, had suggested that they hit the budding attempts at piracy. It was something that had never been much of a problem on Thessia, but with the general disorder of the galaxy now, ‘every man for himself’ attitudes were beginning to run rampant.

Miranda had thought it was a good opportunity to see Adam at work and she found herself chafing for some action too. So far, Adam had lived up to her expectations. He seemed eager to get into trouble, and generally hit people harder than they needed to be hit, but he also followed orders and was careful in his choice of targets.

“Tag him,” Miranda said. Adam knelt to stick a syringe pen into the batarian’s neck. The tracker isotope would be in his system for a minimum of six months and would show him up if she came anywhere near secure buildings. It was the only measure available save execution. They didn’t have the manpower or facilities for incarceration.

“We need to -” Out of the corner of her eye Miranda saw a small figure flash past, taking an eezo container from the stash of stolen goods. Adam had his pistol in his hand quick. “Don’t shoot. We’ll chase him down.”

They went after him, the crowds parting to let them pass. He was small and quick, but they managed to keep up until they arrived at the site of a destroyed building, one of many in this area that had become a refuge for criminals and orphans. The boy ducked into a small shelter made from the rubble.  Miranda and Adam followed him. Adam pressed himself against the side of the shelter while Miranda gripped the metal sheet that passed for a door and pulled it away.

The boy had a pistol pointed at her, frankly too big for his hands, but Adam was ready and wrenched it out of his hands with ease. They boy fell back, scowling at them but scrambling back from the opening. Adam looked at Miranda and shrugged, tossing the boy’s pistol away to the side.

Miranda crouched down and looked into the space. There were four other children there, some may have been teens but they were all minors by most standards. She tried not to think how they had ended up here, a flock of human kids on an asari world.

She held out a hand. “The eezo. What were you planning to do with it?”

The boy glowered and looked between them before replying, mostly to the wall. “Sell it.”

Miranda typed an amount into her omnitool, more than the part was worth, and it spat out a plastic chit. She held out a hand for the container and the boy passed it over, then made a grab for the chit. Miranda held it out of reach.

Adam banged a fist into the sheet and the kids jumped and huddled back into the shadows, the younger ones eying the dent left behind with wide eyes. “ _Don’t steal_. You got lucky with us. The next person who finds you will just take the part and kill you for it.” Miranda offered the chit to the boy again. “Understood?”

He took it wordlessly.

By the time they returned to the original thief’s hideout, an asari unit was almost finished packing up the stash for transport back to a secure location, one that would hopefully stay secure. Miranda handed her the last eezo container.

“I guess this will be your last job for us,” the asari said to Miranda.

She wasn’t the same person that had briefed her. In fact, Miranda couldn’t be certain that they had worked together before. The state of Thessia was such that teams were being tasked and retasked at speeds that were hard to keep up with.

“The Tasale relay is online?”

“It is.” She shut the doors of the shuttle and thumped on the hull and it took off. “You sure I can’t convince you to stay, you’re handy to have around.”

“Thanks,” Miranda said. “But I’ve got a contact waiting for me on Illium.” She hesitated as she moved to leave. “There are children around. You should think about putting them to work for rations or shelter, before they get themselves into serious trouble.”

 ***

Almost all the storefronts on Nos Astra were shut down. Miranda hadn’t really expected much in the way of new tech or weapons available. She knew that as many resources as possible were being pulled to repair the relays, but it was still disappointing so when she found an unsecured rifle she didn’t hesitate in swiping it.

Adam scoffed. “Bit of a double standard, after you just told that kid not to steal.”

“Well, I’m not fifteen and I know what I’m doing. I’m keeping this weapon out of the hands of bad guys.”

“Right,” he drawled, something warm, friendly even, in his voice in a way Miranda hadn’t heard before. “Do as I say not as I do.”

They moved easily through the complex. It was much less busy than Thessia had been and not so much destroyed as abandoned.

“Why did you get involved with Cerberus and their xenophobic agenda in the first place?” Adam asked after a while. Miranda looked at him askance, questioning the source of the question. “You don’t seem to have a problem working with non-humans.”

“I don’t.” Miranda shrugged. “They were the only ones who would protect me from my father. They let me do whatever I wanted to get the job done. After a lifetime of being controlled and micromanaged, a little prohuman terrorism was a price I was willing to pay.”

Adam smirked, all the friendliness gone, replaced by something crueller. “I guess you’re not so different from me after all.

Miranda said nothing but she was tempted to comment that she was clearly superior to him. She would never do something so asinine and ridiculous as his little stunt against Shepard on the Citadel. Then again, Adam had clearly been more reasonable in the short time she had been working with him. It made her wonder what Rasa had told him to make him go along with it, if she had deliberately stoked his bitterness towards Shepard.

They approached the area where they had agreed to meet their contact, one of the VIP areas of the now quiet and almost deserted Eternity. Brian was waiting for them. He shook Miranda’s hand while Adam hung back near the doorway. He had the same perpetually tired demeanour as other faces Miranda had seen since the war started. If anything, it only seemed to be worse now that it was over and they didn’t have fear and desperation, or duty and hope, driving them.

“Ms Lawson. You said you needed to speak to me.”

“I’m just checking in. You were stationed here as a liaison between various companies based in Nos Astra and the Crucible Project, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you staying here? Any plans for forward travel?”

“Well, I’d decided to stay until the relay was repaired. I’m…not sure where to go from here.”

“I see. Have you been in contact with any other people from Cerberus?”

The tension sharpened suddenly. Brian leaned a little away from her, his idle nervous gestures becoming earnest handwringing.

“No.”

“No?”

He slid his palms across his thighs. “I mean yes, but…it wasn’t what you.” He waved his hands. “It was just harmless conversation.”

“Then there’s nothing to be so anxious about is there?”

“It was just. Just conversation, you know? He asked me if I’d heard if the Illusive Man was really dead, or any news about other Cerberus people. I think he just wanted to stay under the radar.”

“I see.”

“I told you it wasn’t important.”

“Nothing is useless,” Miranda said, having pity and finally relaxing her focus on him. “Thank you. You can go.”

“Wait.” Adam pushed away from the wall where he had been leaning. “Tell me what you know about Cerberus’s cloning experiments.”

Miranda narrowed her eyes but let him step forward. Brian was staring at Adam, at his covered face. “Shepard?”

In an instant Adam had him pinned to the wall, a hand pressed to his throat. “I am not him.” He raised a threatening fist. “You’d better remember that.”

“Adam.” It was a terse warning, but in truth she was grimly curious to see what would happen.

He put his hand through the wall, fist disappearing almost to the wrist next to the scientist’s ear. “Tell me what you know.”

“I wasn’t involved in any cloning projects,” Brian croaked.

“Then what did you do for Cerberus?”

“Neurotech. Implants. Behaviour control.”

“Did you ever install the implants?”

“No. At least not that I know of.”

“That’s enough.” She stepped in, closed a hand around his wrist but didn’t pull. “Let him go.”

Miranda could see the muscles jump in Adam’s jaw, saw the moment he gave up. The tendons in his wrist flexed under her hand as he loosened his grip and Brian fell at Adam’s feet. Miranda tossed the scientist a credit chit as he scrambled up. “Don’t speak of this to anyone.” He might have nodded but it was possible that he was just shaking with terror.

She waited until he was gone before turning to Adam. “That was poorly handled.”

“I had to know.”

“If you’d have asked me in the first place I could’ve told you myself.”

He turned to look at her and waved an expectant hand. “Well?”

Miranda sighed. “There were only ever four prototypes made. One was supposed to go into Shepard’s head, the real Shepard” – Adam scowled at the reminder – “but it never was, and the prototypes were never touched during the time I was at Cerberus.”

Adam deflated a little but Miranda still watched him, thinking hard. “Rasa could’ve accessed the data, but then she’d need someone to manufacture it _and_ a specialist to implant it, which wouldn’t go unnoticed. _If_ you were chipped it’s still only a prototype. It could be defective, damaged when you fell, damaged when the Crucible fired. Even then, she’s still well out of control range.”

Adam just stared at her. His face was blank, carefully controlled, but he was breathing a little too fast, too shallow. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” she said.

Adam drew a breath and relaxed visibly, even if he looked a little lost. He started to walk away.

Miranda wasn’t quite finished. “Why did you ask about the cloning project?”

He didn’t stop walking, didn’t even look back. “You know why.”

After they returned to the shuttle Miranda dropped a handful of datapads onto Adam’s lap. “That’s every report and scrap of research on the Lazarus project.”

“Why are you giving me this,” Adam called after her as she moved to leave the hold. “What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch!” Miranda snapped, turning around. “None of this _matters_ anymore. I’m not Cerberus and neither are you. Hell, if you’d have just told me the truth from the start I would’ve taken you to Minuteman Station myself but now we’re on the other side of the galaxy and scheduled for a jump to Omega -” Miranda reined herself back in before she started getting shrill. When had regained composure, cheeks still hot with frustration and embarrassment, she asked, “Is there anything else you need.”

“Not yet,” Adam said, baleful, but just as she was about to climb out of the hold he continued. “You know what I think? I think you’re helping me because this clone business is probably pressing on a lot of your sore spots too.”

His smirk was definitely unfriendly, almost dangerous, and Miranda tensed a little with the effort of not snapping at him again. She climbed out and shut the hatch, quietly cataloguing this new development.

 ***

Afterlife was a completely different atmosphere to Eternity, the irony of which wasn’t lost on Miranda. The music from the club thumped through her chest while she stood in Aria’s ‘office’ and through the windows she could see people dancing wildly. It was almost as if the war hadn’t happen at all here, a thought that made her inexplicably uneasy, and she forced her attention back to the room.

Aria considered them impassively, her eyes lingering on Adam standing, visor covering his face as always, just behind Miranda’s right side. “Word is you’re looking for Cerberus operatives. I’m not sure you’ll find many here.”

Miranda had no interest in stroking Aria’s ego, so she didn’t ask had Aria had heard anything about her reason for being here. “I’m here to find and stop people stealing resources needed to repair intragalactic travel and communication. I’m just covering all the bases.”

“Of course. If you’re going to do a job, you should do it well. Not because it’s personal.” Aria seemed both amused and dismissive. “Like I said, you won’t find much in the way of work here. I run a tight ship.”

“Is that why your relay was up sooner than expected?”

“I can’t get a cut out of smuggling if there are no smuggling routes.” Aria said.

“They seem to be easier to repair out here too,” Ahz added.

“That said, we’re going to help to you. We’ll ship out whatever materials you need.”

“You’re willing to cooperate with the Alliance?” Miranda couldn’t quite keep the scepticism out of her voice.

“Why not. We help you out and then you leave us the fuck alone. Everything goes back to the way it was.”

“Fair enough.” Miranda turned to leave. “I’m sure we’ll find something to keep us busy.”

They stepped out of the lounge and headed down the stairs into the club proper, where everything suddenly too loud and bright as they had been underwater.

“You didn’t tell me you weren’t really here for Cerberus.” Adam said.

“You didn’t ask.”

“It’s just funny,” he said, mildly, almost too quiet under the music. “You said it doesn’t matter, but it seems like it’s the only thing that matters.”

***

They stayed in Omega for a while, working with Aria to help keep an eye on things. Keeping order in the general lawlessness of the station was hard and thankless graft, so they spent as much time as possible visiting mining colonies, checking production and trade agreements, keeping the place safe from piracy.

Miranda made an effort to make sure workers weren’t being exploited. She remembered her time here with Jacob. She hadn’t been able to help the poor and downtrodden then because she was, as she had told him, working on a higher cause and she still was. Even so, he had softened her and her time with Shepard and the rest of the Normandy crew had made her a better, more aware person. It used to be that she only cared about a job done well but now she cared about the job. Now she just cared.

Adam hadn’t said anything about herself in Afterlife that she hadn’t already been aware of, but something about the way he had said it made her turn it over and over in mind. Of course it mattered. Cerberus was weak and scattered and anything relating to them was now near the bottom of any list of problems the Alliance had but it mattered to Miranda. She had to close the book on her past before she could move on. She couldn’t be sure that what she was doing here would count for much, but she couldn’t walk away from it yet.

Adam didn’t seem to be doing as well here in the Terminus as he had been on Thessia or Illium. If anything, he seemed to be deteriorating. There was clear disparity between the blank, docile bodyguard he was around Miranda, or even Aria, and in the generally more civilised areas on this edge of the galaxy, and the rabid dog he was in the slums, taking every opportunity to beat the living daylights out of any asshole they could find with ill-concealed glee. Miranda had become accustomed to the sound of bones breaking.

“It could make things worse in the long run. What if they take out their frustration on everyone else?” Miranda has asked once, more of a token protest than anything.

“They’ll need to heal first. The little people will have time to get away, or get their own back.” Adam’s fist made contact with someone’s face, Miranda couldn’t even remember his name, with a sickening crunch and he said, nonchalant except for that ugly smile, “That is, if they heal at all.”

Miranda kept filing his behaviour away. She watched him do ugly things and tried to match it up to his passivity when there was no one around he could get away with hurting or no one that he actually needed, puzzling him out piece by piece. She thought about the way he asked about the clones, about what he said to her on the ship after Illium, about what he said in Afterlife. She thought about him not knowing what he wanted.

It wasn’t the only thing she was thinking about. Now that things here had become routine she was noticing him more, and not in a way that he’d appreciate. In the early days, it had been deceptively easy to differentiate him from Shepard, even though he looked so similar, when he talked less and smiled less and kept an alliance hoodie pulled low over his face when they were alone. She had never looked out of the corner of her eye and expected to see anyone other than Adam.

Now though, she found herself comparing Adam to the real Shepard all the time. Whether he was playing the anti-Shepard on purpose or not, everything he did was a grating reminder that he was only a cut-rate imposter and that this was only a dark shadow of her days with Shepard. They had been some of the best of her life, where she had found herself doing something that really mattered, with people that she had come to love and a commander that had seen through her, changed her.

Sometimes she was afraid that Adam’s dark corners and sharp edges would only drag her back into the black and white world of her past where only results mattered.

 ***

With more and more relays coming online, Miranda didn’t have to reach far to come up with an excuse to leave the Terminus, nor did she feel the need to explain why she picked Pildea Station as the venue for an in-person debrief. If she had picked a time and place that coincided with a gathering of old friends that was no one’s business but hers.

Severe and overachieving she might have been but she was still a human being. Seeing them again on Tuchanka at the abolition of the demilitarisation laws lifted a weight off her shoulders. They were easy to find in the small crowd. Jacob and Garrus and Tali, who had struck up something of a friendship with her. It was even good to see Jack, so responsible now that it was hard to believe she was even the same person they had freed from Purgatory.

The Krogan, under leadership of Wrex and Bakara, had made impressive headway into rebuilding their war-torn homeworld, not least in the form of the young running through the crowd.  The shroud too had been rebuilt, a memorial to Mordin set before the doors. The reminder that he was gone, and Thane too, was a dull ache. She had liked them; they were capable and friendly in the same way that Miranda was, underneath layers and layers of professionalism. They had both made mistakes and worked to overcome them, given their lives for it.

She mingled for a while before sneaking back to the port to see Shepard. Even though word was now out that he was alive, and despite being invited to many post war events, he preferred to keep public appearances to a minimum.

“If anyone saw me here you know it’s all they would talk about,” he said. “Wrex and his people are the ones who deserve this. And Mordin. They’re the ones who should be remembered.”

“Spoken like someone trying hard to be forgotten.”

“For all the good it does me,” he said, his smile rueful. “Enough of that though, how goes your crusade?”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “It’s not a crusade.”

“No?”

“ _No_. It’s just…I just feel like I need to do something. I want to stop but I don’t feel like it’s finished. Maybe if I do this it’ll be finished.” He was looking at her the way she remembered, seeing right through her with a half-smile as if he had found something charming underneath and it made her feel suddenly emotional, and embarrassed about it. “I’m _fine_.”

“Mhmm.”

“This is all your fault.”

“Oh, I made you soft. I’m so sorry.” She could hear the laughter in his voice. It made her laugh too, but somewhere on the way out of her chest it picked up a sob. “Come here.” Shepard drew her into his arms, shoulders still shaking with laughter. She was still embarrassed but it didn’t stop her melting into his arms a little.

When they broke apart he gave her a little smile, like a secret handshake, one that got was sometimes passed around on the Normandy and always made her feel at home.

“I’d better go,” she said at last.

“Hey.” He caught her arm. “How’s the other one? Adam?”

Miranda made a noncommittal half shrug. “He’s…strange, but he’s only human, I guess.” Shepard looked thoughtful. “You’re worried about him?”

“I might have a soft spot. And I know you have issues about the whole” – he waved a hand vaguely at her – “perfect clone thing so it’s hard to believe it won’t, or hasn’t, come up between you guys. Not that I’m worried about you or anything. There’s nothing in the universe _you_ can’t handle.”

She rolled her eyes and shoved him a little, turning to leave. She could see him still watching her through the glass wall of the elevator. He smiled and waved, and she smiled and waved, and the car took her away feeling as light as a feather, full of hope.

There were two Alliance guards standing outside the bay to the shuttle. “No one in or out, ma’am, as you ordered.”

She thanked and dismissed them. Adam was inside sulking over a datapad. He hadn’t complained about being pulled away from the Terminus but he had been petulant ever since, refusing to leave the shuttle. He scowled at her as she entered and Miranda sighed, throwing herself into the pilot seat and setting a course for Dor.

“Ready to get off this rock?”

The datapad connected with the wall of the shuttle with a sharp snap. Miranda looked over the back of her seat, more judgmental than concerned. “I was ready to go before we got here. This was a bullshit detour. Just because you’ve got bullshit feelings for these assholes and had to come over to see them instead of doing your fucking job.” He fisted his hands in his hair, pacing and swearing under his breath.

“You don’t need to be jealous,” she said blandly, tracking him back and forth.

“Fuck you,” he muttered and stormed into the hold.

Miranda turned back to face the dashboard, even though there was no one to hide her smirk from. “Interesting.”

 ***

The security on Pildea Station weren’t happy about Adam passing through unidentified and made sure that everyone knew it. It was a big station, so by the time they had arrived back from Tuchanka everyone was looking at Adam, face covered and hood drawn up, with poorly concealed suspicion. Miranda noticed that he was hunching self-consciously.

Five minutes after the passed through security Adam, in a fit of pique, removed his visor completely. He glared at Miranda as if daring her to say something about it, but she only shrugged and continued leading the way back to their quarters, thankful that he had at least kept his hood up. Anybody who was punched in the face for mistaking him for Shepard, well, that was their own problem.

After a while, Adam’s footsteps slowed to a stop behind her. She turned half expecting trouble but only found him staring at a unit of storage racks set up against a wall. She looked to the racks and back to Adam. “What?”

“I remember this place.” His voice sounded very far away.

“Remember?” Miranda frowned. “You can’t have been here before.”

“I was…he grew up here. He would always climb here and…and when he was six he fell.” Adam raised a shaking hand to his head, to the scar in his hairline, Shepard’s scar, mumbling, “I hit my head.”

Miranda could only stare at him, his eyes wide and the colour gone from his face. He would have had to be well schooled on Shepard’s history to try and usurp his identity, but the look on Adam’s face wasn’t that of recalling a learned fact, but of experiencing a memory.

After a painfully long second he seemed to snap out of it, moving his hand away and looking at it as if he hadn’t realised what he was doing, as if it belonged to someone else. When he turned back to look at her there was an instant where Miranda thought the dam was going to break, his eyes still too wide and a fine tremor running through his body, as if he were going to snap completely and do something spectacular, or terrible, or both.

Then, just like that, the shutters rolled down on his face and any promise of real emotion was gone.

He turned and walked away, leading them down corridor after corridor to their assigned quarters as if he had lived here all his life. Adam kept his composure the whole way, back straight, and stride easy and measured. They arrive at the room without further incident and Adam headed for the bathroom, sliding gracefully to his knees to lean over the toilet and retch.

Miranda closed the door behind him gently. She was more dismayed than surprised at the deep twinge of sympathy between her ribs. She had known, and accepted, that Adam was damaged and everything that had happened to him was awful and unjust, but Miranda had never really wanted to feel _sorry_ for him.

She had just finished a call to her sister when he finally came out of there. He still looked pale and squinted against the lights as he stumbled to his bunk and curled up on it. Miranda had mercy enough to dim the light a little.

There was a stretch of tense silence before she finally spoke. “Are you going to be alright?”

Voice muffled by the arm folded around himself, he says, “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you -”

Adam cut her off with a raised hand. “Quieter.”

Miranda slipped to the floor and settled near his head, back against his bunk. “Have you ever had a reaction like this before.”

“No.” It was too brusque an answer to be true. Miranda nudged an elbow into his arm. “Yes. Since I fell. Happy now?”

After much prodding from Miranda, he eventually explained in terse, clipped sentences that he had fallen into a cab, breaking his arm in three places and fracturing his skull. The cab crashed. The driver was out cold. He managed to drag himself to shitty clinic down in the wards, found a doctor who would help him without running his mouth.

He cracked open his eyes to look at Miranda, still in too much pain to glare properly but he was angry, she could see it. “There was nothing about obsolescence in the data you gave me.”

“Obsolescence of what?” He just glared a little and then closed his eyes, wincing, the line deepening between his eyebrows. “You?! Why would you assume -”

“I wasn’t healing properly. It took too long.”

Miranda peered at the scar she had first noticed on Mars. Adam had finally had the staples removed on Illium but the scar still looked very pink. “There’s no reason we would deliberately tamper with that kind of thing. We need a Shepard who could fight for us. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with the cloning tech either, it’s the same thing that created me, and my sister.” She sighed. Except they hadn’t finished when Rasa stole him. She swallowed down the urge to swear profusely at her, which wouldn’t help anyone. “What did the doctor say?”

Adam shrugged, tucked his face into his elbow and didn’t resurface. Miranda was half tempted to draw some blood herself while he slept but that would be even more unforgivable that having made a mistake in the project in the first place. She was just about to leave him to sleep when he spoke again.

“He offered me his hand you know. Your Shepard.” He must have been even more tired than she’d thought if he couldn’t muster the usual amount of venom for the name. “I still jumped.”

“Why?”

Adam shrugged again, balled himself a little tighter. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

 ***

There was still some tension in the air on the next morning. It had been the first time Adam had volunteered personal information or said anything about the past that wasn’t in any way relevant to the task at hand. Miranda had been waiting for a moment like this since they had left Mars but now it only troubled her.

She had turned over the problem for a long time last night before she could finally sleep. She wasn’t sure there was anything she could do about the fact that he didn’t know what to do with himself but there were practical options in relation to his healing problem.

“We should go to Minuteman Station,” she says.

“No.”

“No? We could-”

“I don’t want to go there.”

Miranda leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms. She tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice when she asked, “Well, what _do_ you want?”

“I want.” She could see his hands ball into fists and his jaw clench even though he managed to keep his voice flat. “I want to go where there are people I can hurt. Is that good enough for you?”

“Why?” He turned to look at her then with a glare that could have cut strips off her skin – if she had been afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid. There was only that little thrill of smugness that always came when she found someone’s weak spot. “Why do you need people to hurt? Why do you need an acceptable target? Why do you need my permission?”

Adam snarled. In two strides he had crossed the small space and gripped her upper arms, fingers digging in painfully. He shook her once, a sharp jerk forward, a hard thump back into the wall. “Maybe I should just hurt _you_.”

Miranda allowed herself nothing. She kept still and expressionless, utterly aloof. “You can’t hurt me unless I allow it.”

Adam snarled again, an ugly inarticulate sound. His hands tightened and Miranda could feel his fingernails through the sleeves of her uniform. He pulled her forward again.

In the next instant Miranda had him immobilised with her biotics. She let his powerlessness sink in for a moment while he strained against the force of it, his fingers pulling open of their own accord and his eyes narrowing against the bright blue glow of her power, then flung him back against the opposite wall.

He crumpled onto his hands and knees and stayed there, breathing hard and looking like a wounded animal, a hounded fox of days gone by. Miranda let herself sag back against the wall to watch him but he only stayed hunched in on himself, not meeting her eyes.

They stayed like that for a long time. Miranda knew she could wait him out, that she had been waiting him out for months.

Eventually he got up, his movements slow and stilted. He leaned with one hand against the wall and the other arm held across his body, his ribs probably bruised. He looked at her sidelong, keeping his body turned away.

“Why did you do that?” His voice was low, bitter.

“Excuse me?!”

“Why did you let me go on at you, let me threaten you, when you could’ve just...” He trailed off and shrugged, jaw clenched.

“So it’s my fault that you were threatening me?”

“You were baiting me!” he snapped.

“By asking you to be honest?!” Adam looked away. “This whole time I’ve let you do what you wanted, put up with your bullshit. My hands are not clean, I accept that, but you can’t take everything out on other people just because you don’t know what you want.”

The silence rang in her ears and she felt suddenly and utterly exhausted. She felt as if she had been in a fistfight, almost wished that’s what it had been because at least then she would have known when she had won. This constant ambiguous push pull between them was insufferable.

“So.” Adam sounded defeated, just as exhausted as her. “What now?”

Miranda sighed and let herself stumble to her bunk so she could sit down. “Aria called while you were sleeping. She said they spotted a Cerberus officer on a ship they’ve tracked to Horizon.”

 ***

The journey to Omega was not so long as it felt while they skirted around each other in the small ship. They kept the peace for the most part, speaking to each other as little as possible. Adam had been particularly avoidant save for one question when they landed that had surprised Miranda.

“What are you going to do after this?” he asked.

She thought again of her promise to Shepard about living a normal life. It was time to make good on that. “I’m going back to Earth. Retiring.”

“Really?” He kept his voice low while they loaded their weapons. “I don’t think we’re made to retire, you and I.”

Miranda didn’t look up at him. “I thought you didn’t want to be what you were made.”

Adam said nothing more on the matter while they picked their way through the colony, as if he hadn’t asked the question at all. Miranda didn’t have time to wonder what had made him ask.

Horizon was still deserted. It seemed no one wanted to resettle a place where people had been lured in to be experimented on en masse. The place made her skin crawl. It wasn’t just where she had murdered her father to save her sister, but of the culmination of everything Cerberus had used her for, everything she had allowed them to use her for. Maybe the Illusive Man had been indoctrinated for a long time before the end, but it still left a bitter taste in Miranda’s mouth that she had ever followed him.

They were circling back around to the landing zone empty handed when they heard the sound of running footsteps. They raised their rifles automatically to see a figure sprinting between buildings. Miranda could hear Adam’s sharp inhale, see his rifle drop a fraction as their target arrived at her destination and decloaked a ship.

Adam swore under his breath and raised his rifle again, face twisted with anger. Miranda put her hand his arm, forcing his gun down, and hissed, “ _Don’t_.”

 “What are you doing?”

Miranda pulled them both down under cover as the ship started up.

“I don’t think she’s seen us. If we start shooting, she’ll know we’re onto her.” The ship passed overhead and Miranda thought fast, hurling a tracking device into the air. She used her omnitool to guide it to the hull of ship, a confirmatory blink from it when it attached and began transmitting. “Come on.”

They sprinted to their own ship. Adam took the controls to get them in the air while Miranda called in a records search on the Alliance extranet to confirm her suspicions. The VI chimed in moments later.

_Prisoner ID: KM6753PO650. Alias: Maya Brooks. Status: Missing. Containment breach during hostile takeover of the Citadel. Location last recorded: Citadel Security – Level 62 Cell D97. Date of last record: 2186-12-09 23:55:12 UTC._

Miranda showed the readout to Adam, who gritted his teeth and looked away. “We’ll get her,” he said, almost more to himself than to her.

Miranda tried to gauge his mood. “She’s good.”

“Maybe not that good.” Adam shivered and his fingers flexed on the dashboard. “I want to kill her.”

He was angry, of course, but worse than that he was hurt. There was nothing gleeful or vicious in his tone, only the burning desire to risk everything to kill someone who had woken him up and then left him to die.

“I’m sure I can arrange that.”

 ***

“You’ll get her,” Shepard said, his voice crackling with static.

Miranda groaned. “The Terminus is a big place. It’s already been three weeks since we last had a fix on her.”

“At least you got the tracker on it. Even if it’s only short range, that was still a smart play.”

“We’re lucky Aria feels helpful. I’ve passed the tracker signature around to her scouts and smugglers. Rasa’s ship worries me. It’s state of the art stealth, and _fast_. Either she managed to steal it unnoticed or she’s conned someone into helping her and I don’t know which is worse.”

“What did Hackett say?”

“He’s not extending my service contract. My clearance will be revoked at the end of the year as scheduled. I’ll have to let her go if I don’t get her by then.”

“You will.” Shepard sighed. “What about Adam?”

Miranda hesitated. “He wants to kill her.”

“Hmm. Prudent.”

“You’re not going to tell me to talk him out of it?”

“She got away once already.”

“More than once,” Miranda corrected, thinking bitterly of her failure to stop Rasa from leaving with the clone in the first place.

“Exactly. Look, I’m a soldier, I’m not averse to some people just having to be permanently stopped.” Shepard sighed again and Miranda could imagine him rubbing the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders, steeling himself. “I believe that most people can surprise you, but not everyone can change. Not everyone wants to. If you think she needs to be killed then that’s what you need to do.”

“If I catch her in the first place.”

“You _will._ ” She could hear the smirk in his voice, the light teasing. “Your time with Cerberus wasn’t wasted.”

If he were here she would have kicked him. “Neither was my time with you.”

He huffed a little laugh. “You’re gonna be alright, Miranda. I’ll see you soon.”

No sooner had she disconnected the call than Adam climbed up from the quarters. “Anything interesting?” he asked as he approached his seat.

“Nothing.” She called up the updates from Aria’s patrols for him to review at his leisure. She suspected that he had overheard the bulk of her conversation with Shepard and was quietly proud that he hadn’t made something offensive out of it.

He had been different lately. In the two months since Horizon he had been grimly focused, functioning with an almost professional detachment to the tedium of coordinating patrols and checking intelligence from Aria’s informants.

“Shopping for a retirement home?” At Miranda’s quizzical look, he gestured to the datapad abandoned on her lap.

“Funny.” She picked it up and swiped between listings, angled it so he could see. “New build apartments on Earth. I’m going to buy one and ask my sister to come live with me and we’re going to be normal people.”

Adam didn’t fill the silence after her comment with something disparaging and Miranda found herself wondering what he would do after they had done with this. She knew Aria had her eye on him so it could be that he would end up staying in the Terminus, doing whatever Aria needed done, competent and ruthless, maybe even climbing the ranks to her inner circle. Miranda herself still hoped that he could be coaxed into working for the Alliance. If he felt the need to colour outside the lines, there would always be clandestine work that needed to be done.

Whatever happened, she was beginning to trust that he would be able to make responsible choices for himself. She wished she were less invested in his rehabilitation but sometimes, especially when she caught him watching her with something like recognition in his eyes, she would feel that if they both made it out of this then maybe it would all balance out.

She showed him the listing she was favouring. “You’re going to buy me a housewarming present.”

“Not likely.”

“Come on, I’m sure you could manage a plant.”

He scoffed, shook his head to hide a small, wry smile. “How about a fish tank? Think _you_ could keep them alive?”

That startled a laugh out of her, making her fold over in the seat, breathless. When she looked up Adam was looking at her, eyes tired but with a look at could have passed for fondness.

 ***

Miranda gave her equipment one last check. “I don’t want any mistakes this time.”

The turian captain, Decien, nodded. “Her ship is down and she’s wounded. There’s no way she’s getting away this time.”

“Good.” Miranda stationed a team to guard the local spaceport, the only way in or out of this mining colony, while she set the rest of them guarding the purifying facility that Rasa had been seen sneaking into. Turians were always good to have at your back. They might not have had the flair or elite aura of asari commandos but they were the most disciplined force in the galaxy and she could trust them to get the job done.

They slipped into the building without trouble, keeping a low profile. The employees seemed to be blissfully unaware of their small paramilitary presence and Miranda wanted to keep it that way. Aria had made certain that any leaked were plugged after the last three times Rasa had been tipped off, but their presence here could still be given away if people started to panic.

Miranda and Adam worked methodically to clear the building, going up floor by floor in near silence. Miranda thought of how poetically tragic it was that Rasa was going to die in a place just like the one she was born in.

She caught a flash of moment through the dim glass on the right. It was Rasa half sprinting, half stumbling to the door to the roof. Before either of them could run after her, a figure rushes around the corner ahead to meet them. Adam fired immediately and in the resulting commotion neither of them registered the sound of footsteps behind them.

It wasn’t until the body hit the floor that Miranda heard the tell-tale whir of a flashforge. She turned, Adam quick to follow, and fired into the two asari who had been sneaking behind them, omniblades ready.

“There goes the element of surprise.”

“Understatement,” Adam muttered, voice tight with pain.

Miranda looked over her shoulder to find him bent over a little, breathing hard and clutching his abdomen. Nearly ten centimetres of hard red plastic protruded there where it had snapped away from the omnitool of the wielder. Her hands moved automatically to her belt pouch even as she registered the wound, pulling out bindings and medigel pads to press around the blade, not wanting to risk removing it until they could get him proper medical attention.

“Stay here,” she said, fastening the binding as tight she dared. “Don’t move until you’re sure the bleeding has stopped.”

“No.” He leaned heavily onto her shoulder to get himself standing while she gaped. “I told you what I wanted and you said you could make it happen. I’m holding you to that.”

Before she could protest, Decien’s voice came through to her ear. “Squad at the spaceport just shot down a shuttle that was heading your way. If that was the target’s extraction, then she’s trapped. But. We’ve got another problem.”

“Nothing’s ever easy,” Miranda muttered. “Tell me.”

“Your little scuffle up there got people running around for cover. One of those people started screaming about a bomb. It’s probably a backup plan, but we don’t have confirmation. Now, we can go an investigate, confirm, and disarm the bomb, or we can stay at our assigned positions. Your call.”

“We’re closing in. Let’s not risk massive civilian casualties.”

“Copy. We’ll get it done.”

Adam started forward towards the door to the roof. “Come on. She’s trapped.”

“Or she’s had time to lay a trap up there for us,” she said following him.   

“We can handle it.”

He went to one knee beside the door with his pistol drawn and gestured her to the door. He covered her while she bypassed it, his weapon hand steady even as he hunched protectively over his wound. They climbed the few steps to the roof to find Rasa waiting for them on the far side. Adam sighted on her instantly, leaving Miranda to sweep the rest of the roof. She pivoted fluidly behind him and spotted another shooter. She fired even as she pulled herself and Adam down out of the way.

Adam had fired too but Miranda forcing him to his knees had ruined his aim, his shot thrown wide to clip Rasa’s arm instead. Furious, he turned on Miranda, but whatever he was about to say was drown by a fresh hail of gunfire. The second shooter, sprawled forward and bleeding out but not wanting to die quietly, was emptying his clip futilely at their feet and missing by arm armlength. It was still enough to take them both by surprise, making them jump to their feet. Adam, hand tight around Miranda’s arm, took another blind step backwards and off the roof.

Miranda just barely managed to roll with the fall but Adam, already wounded, took it badly, landing hard on his side and driving the blade fully into his body. She reached for him but he only grabbed her arm to lever himself upright.

“Don’t.” He pulled the bindings down to cover the wound properly. “She fell from the other side. I saw it. We’re close.”

He picked up his pistol and swayed dangerously. Miranda shifted her own pistol to her left hand so she could pull Adam’s arm around her shoulder. Adam cried out when she did it and she guessed it was dislocated but she didn’t bother to waste time arguing with him to stop when she knew he wouldn’t listen.

As they turned the corner Miranda was watching their footing, trying to ignore the pain shooting up her leg with every step. She saw Adam raise his pistol from the corner of her eye and looked up to see Rasa aiming at them. Miranda raised her pistol too, but before she could do anything more, Adam stepped to the left, into her until she was pressed against the wall while he took the shot.

They both fired. Rasa’s shot hit Adam in the chest. Adam’s shot hit her between the eyes. Just like that, it was over.

Adam stumbled and fell onto his back. Miranda found herself again rifling through pouches for medigel pads, speaking without really hearing the words. “There’s a clinic nearby.”

“It won’t help.”

Miranda pressed her hands down against the wound and folded his own hands over it. If his heart were on the right, he would already be dead. She fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled but he remained stubbornly limp. “Get up.”

“Come on. I saved the girl. I killed the bad guy. It’s good. Let me-” He coughed wetly over the words, the sound making Miranda swallow and shiver.

“That means I owe you one.” Her hands were shaking and she was breathing too fast but she couldn’t make herself calm down. “I can fix this. Whatever’s wrong with you, I can fix, I know I can. Let me help you.”

“I didn’t take his hand.” He sounded far away but then his eyes focused on her suddenly. His hand closed around her wrist, sticky with blood and surprisingly strong, but he didn’t pull. “I want this. Miranda, I want this.”

 ***

“I’m starting to feel a little bitter. Everybody else has been invited.”

Shepard sounded anything but bitter, his voice warm and playful. It was getting easier for Miranda to play along too, the weight falling off her shoulders day by day as she settled into civilian life.

There were days when it still stung, days when her past kept her awake long into the night, the things she had done and the things she had failed to do. Her sister would tell her that she shouldn’t feel guilty because she had done the best she could, that she wasn’t responsible not seeing through the Illusive Man, nor for anything their father did. She was most definitely not responsible for not being able to fix Adam or make him want to live.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just not possible. You’re not allowed within ten metres of the tank.”

Shepard groaned while Miranda moved to drop from flakes into the fish tank. Through the water and glass, she could see Oriana loading cupboards with groceries. It was a reassuring sight even if she had to bite her tongue to hold back from telling her that she was doing it wrong.

“I’m a changed man, Miranda,” Shepard said. “I promise, my fish killing days are over.”

“I hear there’s a charity gala at Windsor Station next week. There are supposed to be a few big heroes turning up.”

Miranda could hear the thunk of Shepard dropping his head on his desk. “If I go to the gala, will you let me visit?”

“I might.”

She hung up before he could say anything. As she moved to join her sister in the kitchen, she trailed her fingers along the metal frame and Adam’s name etched into the corner.

 

**Author's Note:**

> “...One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.” ~ Neal Shusterman
> 
> This fic belongs in the same verse as, and takes place after, _send lazarus to my father's house_ but you don't have to read it for this to make sense.
> 
> Happy N7 Day! [explodes fish tank]


End file.
